


genesis (this time i'll remake you in my image)

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Gore, Child Abuse, Gen, Physical Abuse, Squibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius cants his head in their direction slightly, like he’s in on the joke, and for a second, Pol thinks he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Marius' life after the disowning ritual will be added as a second chapter when I get around to writing it.

[May 1916]

Pollux is four years old when his little brother is born, and he skips to his mother’s room because Father is far too busy puzzling over the new arrival to discipline him for acting like a common child. Father believes that Blacks must be held to a higher standard and that such raucous behavior is unacceptable, but it makes Pol’s heart feel a little lighter. Maybe that’s why Father doesn’t want them skipping, he thinks, because it makes them feel human.

He enters the room and instantly sets his courses for the lacy bassinet by his mother’s bed, allowing her to kiss his forehead before leaning down to see the baby closer. The baby has curly brown hair, like Mother, and her slightly protruding ears. The only characteristic he shares with Pol and Cass, who both resemble their father a little too heavily, is the nearly unhealthy pallor of his skin. He seems to smile, revealing pink gums yet unmarked by the small white hills of teeth, and the edges of Pol’s lips curve upward slightly as he looks to his mother for approval.

Mother rubs his back and he breaks into a full on grin, the tension carried in his thin shoulders fading until Father, alerted by the baby’s coos, comes striding in to set things to order. Pol stands tall, as the heir to the his father's legacy should, and remembers the most important question.

“What’s his name, Father?” He asks, the normally tremulous child’s voice sounding strong and refined.

“Marius Delphinus Black.” Father says, nodding sagely, and Pol remembers the stories Mother tells enough to know that Delphinus is the dolphin, who swims through the night sky.

“I would rather have a dolphin.” Pol mutters loud enough for only Mother to hear and she keeps a straight face until Father leaves the room, shutting the door behind him, and they share a quiet chuckle between them.

Their little secret.

Marius cants his head in their direction slightly, like he’s in on the joke, and for a second, Pol thinks he is.

[March 1919]

“Smile, Mar!” Cass pokes the tip of her baby brother’s nose with her finger, laughing as he bares all of his tiny baby teeth in an attempt to intimidate her. Cass is a year and a half older than Marius, who’s almost three now, but she knows she’s much stronger and smarter than such a little baby, so she’s not worried. Pol always runs away when Mar flashes his teeth like that and Mar laughs and laughs until Cass laughs with him.

But Cass is old enough to know that something else is at work. When she was three, she was picking boxes of sweets off the high shelves and Pol, when he was that little, would make little plant leaves into tiny birds that flew circles around his head.

Mar hasn’t done anything like that yet, and Mum’s scared.

Cass can feel it.

She’s always been that way, a little too sensitive to the changes in emotion, which in her house, are a constant current of danger.

She hears them like others would hear the crashing of cymbals or the sound of the old piano which Pol plays late at night.

She sees them like the green and silver tie that Father has saved from his school days and she plays at wearing sometimes and the purples and pinks of Mother’s ball gowns.

She feels them like the finger shaped bruises that she sometimes sees around Mar’s wrists and the black eyes that sometimes adorn Pol’s face.

Her brothers wear these horrors like a victor’s laurel crown, holding their heads high despite the shades of blue, green and yellow painted across pale skin, but Cass is not that way.

Cass feels everything and it is terrifying, beyond terrifying. And she feels the fear from her mother, the anger from her father and disappointment, sinking down on all three of them like a weighted blanket. She can hear it in the whispers of “maybe the next one will be better” and “perhaps another try would be good”, can see it in the way people cast their gazes aside when she, Pol and Marius stand together at events.

Mar smiles too often, but he doesn’t know any better, and Cass would love to hide him, love to keep him safe forever in her arms, but she has a bad feeling.

Her bad feelings have never once been wrong.

[October 1920]

Marius knows he is different, but he realizes it more when Dorea is born.

He is four years old, the same age Pol was when he was born, and hears the doctor telling Mum that this will be the last of her children. He hears Father pacing, like he always does when he’s dissatisfied with something, and wrings his hands frantically while squeezing himself between Pol and Cass as if he could melt into them if he tries hard enough.

When he is finally allowed to see the baby, he realizes why.

She looks exactly like a tiny Pol, down to the slight curve of her sharp nose to the left, and he can see Cass in the deep set of her steel gray eyes. His siblings all look alike, with their black hair and nearly identical gray eyes, but Marius is different. Marius is all his mother’s family, with his curly, brown hair and bright blue eyes.

Marius is different.

Dorea does not smile at him when he smiles at her, so he creeps back to his spot between his siblings, head down to avoid notice.

Father hates seeing his eyes, tells him he is not a real Black because he looks nothing like his siblings and parents, so Marius has learned to observe the ground, or his feet, to stay in the game.

Marius loves his father and his mother and his siblings, even little Dorea, who smells nasty and cries, and will do anything for them.

Anything, it seems, but magic.

[July 1923]

Pol’s heart feels like it is being squeezed in an icy fist when Dorea’s toy, aptly named Mister Monkey, floats down from the shelf where Mother has put it while she is in timeout and into her outstretched arms while she giggles. Dorea is all of three and some odd months, clad in a pink, fluffy dress that Mother has selected for Pol’s wedding, which will occur in a few hours.

Cass is moping around, angry about the addition of yet another annoying sister to the family, and Pol doesn’t blame her. He has met Irma Crabbe a few times at school, run into her in the common room or at Quidditch matches, and she seems alright. He is only twelve and hopelessly confused, and has an aging potion to reckon with in a few hours.

Mar is nowhere to be found, but Pol has a sneaking suspicion that he will not be the only one growing beyond his years tonight.

But for Mar, it will be permanent, not like Pol, who will be five years older for a few short hours to make the marriage legal.

It’s the perfect crime, Pol realizes, because they can always just say they made an extra batch. A scream dies in the back of his throat as his father opens the door to the room he and Dorea are in and nods, motioning for both children to follow him to the fireplace.

He looks around, realizes that Mother is cleverly hiding her tears as she grips Dorea and Cass’ hands a little too tightly, and, for the first time, reads the vaguely disinterested set of Father’s face as what it is.

Look at the perfect family, now, he thinks.

A father, mother and their angelic three children, all perfectly resembling each other. Not a single hair or corner of cloth out of place. Everything is as it should be—still, undisturbed and unchangeable. There is nothing to indicate that there has been another brother in this family for nearly seven years, nothing to indicate that a beautiful boy with curly brown hair and blue eyes that smiled more than he should once ran through these halls, whooping at the top of his voice, to try and bring life to halls painted a darker black than night.

There is nothing to indicate that he will not be coming back.

Look at the perfect family, Pol thinks, rid of the only one strong enough to change them, and he walks forward into the flames to his reckoning.

[July 1923]

“Tonight. The basement.” Father says, once they have all returned from Pol’s wedding, and Cass nods obediently. “Pollux, Cassiopeia, the two of you should come along.”

Pol is nearly shaking and Cass wonders what is going on, why he is so scared, and finds out when they follow their father down into the basement and find the adults, fresh from the wedding as well. Uncle Sirius, who is the head of the family, produces some approximation of a smile when he notices his nephew and niece, but Uncle Arcturus does no such thing, his dour expression staying fixed upon his face as if glued there for all of eternity.

Marius is sitting in a chair, arms and legs bound to it with rope that Pol knows will not give, as the angrily red skin of his brother’s wrists and ankles prove, and calls out to him when he notices his siblings. “Pol! Cass! They’ve—they’ve tied me up!”

The adults laugh, but Uncle Sirius looks Pol’s way, as if to see what he chooses, and Pol stands stock still, unmoving, as Marius’ cries become increasingly insistent and panicked. Cass slides her fingers into the gap between Pol’s, understanding immediately what he is doing and feeling, and nods quietly when he looks to her. He sighs, adjusting the placement of his feet slightly, and stands strong, holding his head high as if he is more than his father’s heir.

Uncle Sirius smirks, a sign of approval if Pol has ever seen one, and he nods. “All trees grow diseased, if left alone for too long. We must cut away the parts that rot, Pollux, for the tree to grow stronger. What are our words, boy?”

“Toujours pur.” Pol says, the words rolling off his tongue like they’ve always been there. “Always pure.”

“And what does that mean, Cassiopeia?” Uncle Sirius turns to Cass, who parrots the answer back just as Pol had.

“That we must keep the family pure if we wish our blood to remain the same way.” Uncle Sirius looks satisfied and nods.

“Do you agree, then? With the decision to cut this disease out of the family?” He motions vaguely in Marius’ direction, and Marius stops pulling at the ropes, now slick with blood, to wait for a response. He looks hopeful, Pol thinks, and that’s what he’s always lacked. Perhaps blue eyes are harder to hide emotions with than gray ones.

“We agree, and reject his kind.” Pol says, voice unshaking. “The line must remain pure.”

“Pol, please—“ He and Cass look away, as if acting as one unit, when Marius calls to them one last time, then falls silent, head forward against his chest in a recognition of what is to come.

The adults raise their wands and begin a spell that has Marius screaming wildly, and Pol hopes for a split second that someone will stop it, someone will save his brother, before realizing that the truth is written in the sick grins on his family’s faces. No one will come for his brother, no one is there to save him.

He must save himself, if he is to be saved at all, and Pol and Cass are rushed up to bed hand in hand while the adults dispose of Marius’ prone form, ignoring the way his face is slowly disappearing from every portrait in the house.

[September 1926]

“Toujours pur.” Cass repeats, whispering the words to herself as she wears pride like the cloak that drapes around her shoulders. Marius had never managed to say the words right, always pronouncing letters that do not need to be, and she smiles at the memory. No one knows where he is now, and they have all been forbidden from searching for him, or even speaking of him around Dorea, who was young enough to forget that she ever had more than one brother. “Toujours pur.”

She will be Sorted into Slytherin tonight, join her brother in a green and silver draped dungeon room, and live out her life exactly as planned. It will be perfect, she thinks, as she artfully arranges her meticulously curled hair, before boarding the brilliantly scarlet train that will take her to her future.

Dorea and Walburga both look absolutely miffed on the platform, angry that they will not be going along, and they wave disinterestedly at Wally’s father and aunt as the train pulls away, puffs of scarlet smoke bleeding into the sky, and Cass wonders if Marius would have knotted a scarlet and gold tie around his neck rather than the green and silver one already tucked away in her trunk, and decides he was far more than brave enough.

Pol, who always seems to sense when she is thinking about Marius, nods sagely. “If only.” He says, in a voice that has only recently started to waver and crack.

“If only.” She agrees, and falls silent, watching scarlet smoke spread into the blue of the sky like the stains of her little brother’s blood on the stone floor of the basement, and wonders where he is.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking the aging potion (which permanently boosts Marius' age by fifteen years) into account, it is actually entirely possible for him to be related to Harry and James in the way I described. I know a lot of people subscribe to the theory that James is Charlus and Dorea Potter's son, but I personally do not.
> 
> Regardless, enjoy. 
> 
> This is quite a bit shorter than his siblings' chapter, but I did my best.

[July 1923]

Marius feels big, when he wakes up with the sun, the streaks of pink light playing across the sky finding their home on the back of his eyelids.

He rubs his eyes with hands that are much larger than he remembers and scrambles to his feet, using the trashcan to boost himself up, and sways dangerously for a bit before rubbing his eyes again. He stumbles out of the alley once he feels sure enough on his feet and recognizes a familiar street, notices that the brass numbers on the houses go straight from eleven to thirteen, and his breath catches in his throat.

He remembers living in Number Twelve, remembers playing and laughing and running down the halls at breakneck speed until Father noticed, remembers hiding on the stairs to scare Pol at night and playing chess with Cass after lunch. He remembers too many things, and the memories feel like they’re pressing at his skull in an effort to escape their prison. He knows those memories feel different, like they’re from a past life, because they all feel fuzzy, and he just wants to be away from the source.

So he makes his way down the winding streets of London, the sun’s slow ascent into the sky bringing more and more of the city to light, and catches sight of a man’s face in a store window.

It takes him a few minutes to realize that the man he sees in the window is himself.

[August 1923]

He had found all sorts of papers in the pocket of the coat he was wearing, informing him that he was now twenty-two, fifteen years older than he was less than a month ago, along with the address of a small flat set aside for him. He had settled down rather quickly, but finding a job was much more taxing of a task.

Well into August, nearly a month after Pollux’s disaster of a wedding, he allows himself to wonder what his siblings are doing as he wanders between shops, checking for signs that they need some help. He has worked the docks, done so since the first day, because they do not ask for names there, only that you are able bodied and willing to put in an honest day’s work.

He doesn’t know what to tell people, when they ask his name, because his name marks him as odd. As one of them, one of the monsters that kicked a child out of his home, but aged him into an adult to avoid the guilt. So he carefully sidesteps any mentions of a family other than vague references to having siblings, when asked, and never reveals his name to anyone.

But that all changes one morning, when Marius is manning the till at the local store to prevent kids from buying liquor, and a dignified looking old man strides in as if he owned the place, scanning the room until his gaze settles on Marius’ face.

“Good Lord…” He whispers under his breath, blinking once before regarding Marius carefully. “You’re the boy, aren’t you? Vi’s boy?”

Marius nods slowly, wondering who this is, and then it hits him. The resemblance to his father is strong, unbelievably, strong, and he vaguely remembers an uncle who disappeared when he was very young. Father’s ensuing monthly rants about Muggles and their deplorable status had been too well timed to not coincide with the disappearance, so Marius had learned quite early to agree whenever Father began one of his tirades against purebloods who supported them in any way.

“Uncle Phineas?” He tries, unsure, and the man’s relieved smile builds his confidence just slightly. Marius has always been good with remembering relations, something his brother had been beyond terrible at, so he’d been quite the useful shadow at events, whispering to Pol who the person speaking to him was and how they were related without being detected.

“Marius, isn’t it?” He asks and Marius nods. “You look exactly like her brother, you know. Augustus, now, he was a fine specimen of man.”

Marius vaguely remembers Uncle Augustus, who insisted upon being called Gus whenever the adults were out of earshot, and smiles just barely, because that, in his view, is much better than resembling his father in any way. His mother’s family would have kept him, he reasons, being far more forgiving than his father’s in every incident he remembers, and he would much rather claim Bulstrode ancestry than ingratiate himself with that pack of wolves.

The bell attached to the door rings and another man walks in, clearing his throat urgently as he motions to the shelves behind Marius. “Would you like to come by for dinner sometime, Uncle?” Marius asks, before tending to the customer’s needs as efficiently as possible.

“It would be an honor, dear nephew.” Phineas inclines his head slightly, cracking a weak smile before following the customer out of the door.

Marius had forgotten to ask if his uncle knew the address, but knowing too well how that family worked, he reasons that he would have asked if he needed it.

And when Phineas shows up, utterly drenched from the pouring rain, at his apartment building two and a half weeks later, he smiles and lets him in.

[October 1923]

“Henrietta Northwyck.” She says, green eyes looking more alive than Marius has ever seen before. “And you’re Marius, aren’t you? I remember you.”

The words “I remember you” settle deep in his heart and send warmth flaring through his chest like a bomb has just been set off, and she fits her lips to his in a fit of pique that later becomes a night spent in his apartment.

“You remember me?” The words rush out on a breath in the early morning, when they are both lying in a pile of tangled bed sheets, and she nods. “Really?”

“Marius Delphinus Black”, she says, walking her fingers down the length of his upper arm. “Brother to Pollux Cepheus, Cassiopeia Maia and Dorea Lucia.”

“Would you stay?” He asks, the question settling awkwardly between them. “If I asked nicely?”

“It’s warm here.” She says, after a pause. “And I don’t know about you, but I like warm places.”

He smiles, wide and unapologetic, and she traces the side of his face like he is a sculpture, made to be admired.

Perhaps this will last, he thinks, as he comes home daily to her making dinner or fixing up something or the other in the flat, and it feels new and bright and wonderful in a way the Grimmauld Place house never did.


End file.
